Sounds like a good lesson learned on gear checks .. I made that mistake once at around jump 50 trying to rush to get on a load. caught it on a final check before exiting.. As I was told after the jump by experienced jumpers ” its a fairly common mistake that is made once... After that you will always check, recheck and check again” And for about 350ish jumps since that has held very true and always will . Near death experience, I would say no .. Made a mistake and now have had a great learning experience is the bottom line of it all.. Gear checks, do them on yourself and fellow jumpers! Just my .02

Thanks for sharing For this reason one of the experienced jumpers at my DZ randomly grabs peoples chest straps to see they are routed correctly

I like the intent but not the practice. Please dont ever put your hands on me or my gear without permission.

After the FL incident where the WSer came out of his harness skydivers suddenly thought it was ok to constantly rub and pat my thighs to make sure my leg straps were on. I appreciate the intent, but it doesn't justify that particular execution.

"If your chest strap is not correctly routed you will fall out of your rig when you deploy your parachute."

No, you generally won't. I've jumped with a misrouted chest strap and only realized it after I opened up and heard the "tink tink tink" of the empty friction adapter blowing around in the wind.

Why is this important? There was a recent incident where someone got very, very low caused by spending too much time trying to rethread a chest strap. It's not worth going in to solve a problem that likely will not kill you. If you deploy in a "normal" body position, with arms way out in front of you, your rig can't come off unless it slides all the way up your arms - and that's very unusual with a rig that fits well. And if that's an issue you can cross your arms over your chest, although this can actually _increase_ the odds of falling out by causing a head down deployment - so don't do this unless you've practiced flying face-down this way.

So overall very good points, and the very best way to deal with a misrouted/unrouted chest strap is to not have one to begin with. But in the unfortunate event that you find out about it in freefall - don't think that you are dead unless you get it routed.

Yes, good clarification - there are ways to (mostly) safely deploy when you discover you don't have your chest strap routed properly in freefall. Grabbing opposite mudflap when deploying is one of them.

Trying to stuff your chest strap in and lose altitude awareness and have an AAD fire is NOT one of them :)

Or to tweak what we're all taught in AFF: "Pull Pull at the right altitude Pull with your chest strap properly done"

Don't sacrifice the first two for the last one :)

billvon, I'm interested in some more of your thought on crossing left after and grabbing mud flaps. Sounds like you think it's actually safer to deploy in a normal body position with an unrouted chest strap?

Thank you and FreeFallFiend for that. For one thing, it's kind of annoying to see people grabbing other people's gear without asking first. Secondly, there's more than one way to misroute a chest strap. Pulling on it isn't the way to check it. Looking at it, and seeing what you're looking at, is more effective.

It's never a good idea to jump without a chest strap.... or one that is mis-routed or not attached correctly.

But, that being said, unless you have a really bad opening or bad body position, you are not going to fall out of your parachute if the chest strap is either mis-routed or just not attached.

Once more, it's never a good idea, and I always check mine and as many around me as possible before boarding.

Quite a few years ago, I simply ran the chest strap over the buckle and for some odd reason looped it through the elastic keeper. No one caught it and my first indication of a problem was after opening, a missing altimeter that was on my chest strap, before I got on the airplane.

I'm not the first and surely won't be the last to do this and I do appreciate your "there I was story" in hopes that it will prevent someone else from being careless.